


Reports of My Drowning Were Largely Fabricated

by youshallnotfinditso



Category: The Social Network (2010)
Genre: Attempted Murder, Blood Drinking, F/M, Graphic Depiction of Drowning, Harm to Animals, M/M, Needles, Reckless Behavior, Suicidal Thoughts, Toxic Behavior, Unhealthy Friendship, Vomiting, blood drawing, occult activity, unhealthy relationship
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-01
Updated: 2021-03-03
Packaged: 2021-03-13 06:41:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,509
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29772180
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/youshallnotfinditso/pseuds/youshallnotfinditso
Summary: Divya tried not to hold it against Tyler Winklevoss for making it all the way through the Porcellian’s punch process after Divya got cut at round three. The fact that his twin brother didn’t make it either soothed the burn a fair amount, at least until junior year rolled around, and Cameron suddenly found himself with an invitation in hand and a lot less time to spend with Divya.With two best friends in the club and a lot more time to ask questions, Divya began to realize there was something off about Cam's initiation process. And he was going to get to the bottom of it if it was the last thing he did.
Relationships: Divya Narendra/Cameron Winklevoss, Original Female Character/Original Male Character, Tyler Winklevoss/Original Female Character
Comments: 5
Kudos: 7
Collections: The Prompt Network





	1. A First Breath

**Author's Note:**

> Chapter 2 of this fic portrays a graphically detailed depiction of drowning (nonfatal). If this is in any way triggering or upsetting to you, please don't force yourself to read further.

Divya tried not to hold it against Tyler Winklevoss for making it all the way through the Porcellian’s punch process after Divya got cut at round three. 

The fact that his twin brother didn’t make it either soothed the burn a fair amount. And Divya knew better than to look at the clubs as an all or nothing package. He hadn’t made it in, but that didn’t make the entire experience a net loss. The whole point of the clubs was to make connections, and Divya could still do that. He’d still met people in the first few rounds. Nothing was stopping him from maintaining those connections — keeping himself memorable to the types of college boys who were susceptible to flattery, who enjoyed flexing their ability to grant favors.

The punch process had introduced him to the twins, after all. 

It was their piss poor alcohol tolerance that had broken the ice, that first open event where members kept taking Divya aside and offering him drinks from their flasks. Normally he wouldn’t be so stupid as to indulge a group of rich idiots with no regard for consequence, but. He wasn’t stupid, was the thing, and he’d figured it had something to do with their selective process. So he’d choked down his good sense with their godawful liquor, keeping his eyes peeled for anyone else who might’ve been subjected to this special treatment. 

They were clearly trying to hide it, keeping their backs ramrod straight and their eyes focused, but neither could do anything about the telltale flush burning its way up the backs of their necks, settling high on their cheeks. Their handshakes were firm, as if in apology.

They’d been pleasant enough, if a little cliche — rich, hardworking twins from Connecticut, from a gleaming golden family of five boys, who rowed crew and finished each other’s sentences and didn’t struggle to crack open the shellfish hor d’oeuvres. Divya might not have kept up with them at all if not for the way the more reserved, the politer of the two, had a lingering gaze that Divya could practically feel against his skin. 

To Cameron’s credit, it had been subtle. Divya knew it was only detectable as a result of how utterly, flying drunk he was, and even still, Cam was cautious. Only allowing himself the briefest skate of a once-over when Divya loosened his tie, a couple glances too many at Divya’s wrists and forearms. Only noticeable to Divya because he knew that technique of indulgence within restraint. Had used it himself.

The fact that he and Cameron had that in common seemed useful, if risky to put out in the open, so he kept the observance close to the vest, like a server pocketing silverware. 

Still, they seemed friendly at best, a good contrast for his own fortitude at the very least. So Divya made nice and helped them stay upright, and blamed the shrimp when he went home and dreamed of drowning all night.

Their friendship really began when the twins flagged him down one morning after passing him on the way to an early lecture, exchanged contact information and promises to meet up and hang out. And Divya wasn’t sentimental, but it mattered that they hadn’t waited to see whether he’d had a handwritten invitation slid under his door explaining the process for second cuts. That they were interested in him regardless.

And it mattered that they were there with him the night second-cut finalists were pulled out of bed at two in the morning, collectively made to polish off a bottle of single barrel whiskey, swim across the Charles, and expected to recite each Latin phrase bordering their invitation from memory on the other side. 

“I don’t even know what I said, I took Akkadian for my dead language emphasis,” Divya confessed to Tyler after, when the twins insisted on walking him to his dorm.

“Something about sorrow, if ours were the same. And if my retention from tenth grade is any good,” Cam interjected. Always first to humble himself, even while cutting in. “Drowning in sorrow, drowning in tears, pulling blood away from the water that gave birth to life?”

“Got it in one,” Tyler said with unspoken authority. “And your pronunciation could’ve fooled me, Div. You’re a natural at it.”

“I said I don’t speak Latin, I didn’t say I’m helpless.”

“We would never assume that,” Cam reassured, though later put an arm around him without being asked when Divya’s teeth began to chatter.

It wasn’t unwelcome. 

Divya was at their dorm when third-round invitations were slid under their door, and rather than opening them immediately, they walked Divya back to his dorm to see if he’d made it as well, poured a round of Wild Turkey to celebrate before opening them altogether.

The third trial was somehow simultaneously more excessive and more forgettable, a private flight to some associate member’s beach house for a small party and bonfire. Whatever standards they were meant to rise through, Divya and Cameron did not meet them.

It was almost satisfying, how unsettled Tyler became at having to go on alone. 

“There’s something he isn’t telling me,” Cam kept saying, only for Divya to snort and pity him a little, remind him “It’s a goddamn secret society, and we’re on the outside.” But he wasn’t wrong that Tyler seemed … off, somehow. Pale and feverish through the rest of initiation, repurposed with a cold vigor once he came out the other side.

“He said all the secrecy isn’t about the clubs at all, he’s trying to pass it off that he’s in _love_ ,” Cam complained on one of the many nights that Tyler abandoned them for a club outing. “Like that’s supposed to account for the nightmares, or, or the _crying_ , or the fact that I’m picking up his slack on the water every morning.” 

“I’m sure it’s just drugs,” Divya comforted, if only for the way Cam’s face went pinched and displeased at the very idea. He was easy to rile, and Divya enjoyed it every time.

Divya did have a vague sympathy for Cam’s dismay. He had front row seats, after all, to the acute misery of twin brothers growing apart from each other, even if he couldn’t exactly relate. But he was also good at landing on his feet, and couldn’t help but look for the positives. The fact that Cam was used to having someone at his side at all times was something Divya was only too happy to accommodate for, and it didn’t take long for that to extend to invitations to Winklevoss family outings on lakefronts and vineyards, to a summer internship Tyler passed over for a Porcellian alum’s mentorship opportunity. 

Divya nurtured his friendship with Cameron carefully. Played his cards right and didn’t sleep with him, played up his own frustration with not making it past third cuts, attempted to gather intel from Tyler to bring back to Cam. Tyler was sharp, was always obviously aware that Divya had ulterior motives whenever he was around him, but they had a lot in common and got along regardless. Tyler would drop hints for him and Divya would dutifully report back to Cameron, and they eased their way into junior year that way, an awkward but steady three-legged race. 

“Her name’s Emily, she has a boyfriend, and she’s graduating this year, so you can stop fussing that he’s going to take all this melodrama to the Olympics with you. He’ll get over it, man,” Divya reassured Cameron while Cameron paced, fretted, insisted something much bigger _had_ to be wrong, that they just weren’t seeing it.

If Divya had paid closer attention, he might not have been so blindsided when the Porcellian Club slid an invitation under Cameron’s door just in time for the punch process to restart their junior year.

“I know what you must be worried about,” Cam soothed one night as he drove Divya back to his apartment. Divya preferred being driven home to making the trek in the cold — he wasn’t an idiot — but the luxury of heat always made it such a shock of adjustment once he opened the door, once he had to climb up the exterior stairs in the freezing cold. “I won’t make you go through that again, alright? I know some things are secret, but I can at least promise not to withdraw.”

Divya could have kissed him then. He had the feeling Cam might have been angling for it, even, but he knew better than to initiate any type of relational change himself. Knew better than to give Cam something he could shift into a goodbye.

“It’s not exactly skin off my nose for you to make yourself a better connection,” Divya reasoned. “Isn’t that better for business?” 

It wasn’t entirely true. Cam was right to worry a little, because there was a part of Divya that utterly seethed with envy, but Divya had also known he and Cam couldn’t stay joined at the hip forever. Even when Cam was on the outs with Tyler, with their one-foot-in-one-foot-out Porcellian status, they were still training for the Olympics. Still sharing a major and calling home together, meeting up for meals and going to the same parties. It was why Divya had pitched HarvardConnection to them in the first place rather than keeping the idea to shop around for himself. It was their project. The three of them.

Divya knew if Cam punched the Porcellian, it at least wouldn’t interfere with HarvardConnection. Even Tyler was able to find time to meet up about that. If Divya lost their friendship but still managed to keep their partnership off the ground, he could live with it. He started making more plans with other friends, dated around enough to land a steady girlfriend, and didn’t let himself worry overmuch.

Divya began to worry when Cam showed up at his doorstep at four in the morning the night after Porcellian initiation. 

His skin was the pale white of a dead fish.

“I’m not asking because I’ll think less of you, okay, but you have to tell me what you’re on right now,” Divya had said as Cam vomited up water. His eyes streamed, but he didn’t seem to be crying. 

Every time Cam tried to speak, he choked. Neither of them slept. Cam went to crew that morning against Divya’s furious insistence not to, returned hours later fresh as a fucking daisy while Divya pounded espresso and black tea to get through the rest of the day.

They never talked about it.

Cam had promised not to withdraw, but the way he carried through with that was almost worse. The regularly scheduled texts, the lunches where Cam made small talk like he’d learned it out of a handbook, the recommendations for business opportunities clearly passed along out of pity. They didn’t gossip about Tyler or discuss their insecurities. They hardly fucking talked at all anymore.

Divya poured everything he had left into the HarvardConnection, burning with the need to ensure at least one thing worked out in his favor. That he had one thing to show for swimming the fucking river at two in the morning sophomore year, for letting himself get played as badly as he did.

And then Zuckerberg stole their website. And Divya had nothing.

If Divya were to pinpoint the night that set everything in motion, it wouldn’t have been that terrible night at the a capella concert, when everything went crashing around their ears. It wouldn’t have been when Porcellian first cuts rolled back around senior year, and Divya had choked back the acid in his throat as Cam and Tyler tried and failed to rein in their guilt every time they looked at them. It wouldn’t have even been when he’d impulsively broken it off with KC, just to scorch the earth himself instead of waiting with dread for what was surely incoming.

No, it was the email Mark finally responded to, insinuating their claims were baseless after months of radio silence. 

“He called the three of us club members,” Divya had said, incredulous, reading over Cameron’s shoulder as he leaned over the back of the twins' couch.

“It makes sense,” Tyler said, shrugging. “That he’d think we were in the bike room for his benefit alone.”

“And you do have a certain confidence about you,” Cameron agreed, assessing Divya as though re-meeting him after several years apart. “I wouldn’t have questioned whether you belonged there or not.”

Tyler winced. Divya said, “Right,” in a cool voice, and Cameron seemed to know that he’d erred. Dug up the vodka they’d gotten as a Christmas present from their eldest brother Harrison, and lined up three shots.

“Ty?” He offered, but Tyler’s phone was buzzing, calling his attention away. It had seemed odd, to Divya, for this time of night.

“If you’d excuse me for a minute,” Tyler said, withdrawing to his room, and Divya heard forced cheer in his voice as he greeted, “Emily,” behind the still-closing door.

“Pick your poison,” Cam sing-songed under his breath in the direction of Tyler’s room, before downing Tyler’s shot himself. 

It wasn’t until several stages of drunkenness later, a flush rising high in Cam’s cheeks, that Divya finally acted on the impulse to ask.

“So what _was_ in the flasks at that first party, are you privy to that? Do you do that to the fresh meat now, is that your job?”

Cam sighed good-naturedly, smiling. Divya was too drunk to find it strange at the time, but he found himself captivated by the bead of a tear welling up in Cam’s perfect eyelashes. It dripped down Cam’s cheek without Cam seeming to notice at all. He didn’t seem to be crying. It probably didn’t matter.

“We’re really not meant to say,” Cam said in that lofty tone he sometimes got. Like butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth.

“Can you at least tell me which part I fucked up? Since you figured that out before they let you back in?”

Cam cocked his head at him. “What makes you say that?” 

“They wanted you back for the second round. You clearly fixed _something_ ,” Divya insisted, more because he wanted it to be true than because he actually believed it. Because it was just as likely they simply hadn’t wanted Divya, that the problem was entirely his own making.

“Div,” Cam said sadly, and there was a second where it seemed like he might actually break. Like he might actually let Divya back in, might bring him into the fold.

Instead, he started coughing.

“Oh, what are you, fourteen?” Divya sneered while Cam coughed and coughed into his shirtsleeve. “Did it _sting_ , does his royal highness need a drink of water? Did the vodka go down worse than the fucking silver spoon you have rammed in there at all times?”

It was one of the worst sounds Divya had ever heard, that coughing. Wet and visceral, like the last gasp of a dying man. When Cam finally stopped, there was a wet patch at the inner elbow of his sleeve. He acted like there was nothing there, even as Divya stared. 

“I promise, Divya, I'm giving you my _word_ that if I could tell you I would,” Cameron told him. His eyes were wet, but his voice was steady and clear. “But I think I can show you.”


	2. A Death Rattle

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains a graphic depiction of drowning, a blood drawing scene using hypodermic syringes, and a nightmare where a snake is subjected to harmful behavior (it's not a real snake). Disturbing imagery pervades throughout, as do depictions of toxic relationships. Tread carefully!

Divya spent two days keeping his eyes peeled for secret society bullshit. Waiting to see if he’d missed whatever it was, whether he’d find something inscribed in the sole of one of his shoes or encoded into his homework. It was almost disappointing when the sign he was waiting for turned out to be nothing more than an email, a simple request from Cam to stop by when he had a moment.

“Here, you should drink this before we get started,” Cam instructed the moment he arrived, placing a bottle of water in his hands.

“Magic mushrooms, huh?” Divya said, because his specialized arts high school had left him with a fairly well-rounded education.

“Oh,” Cam laughed, “if only.”

They settled on the couch. Divya made himself comfortable while Cam fussed with an underwhelmingly ordinary drawstring athletic bag.

“So are you missing a club function for this? Is that why Tyler’s not here?”

“Tyler,” Cam said conspiratorially, still messing with whatever he had in his bag, “answered a phone call at 8 in the morning and then told me to hit the gym without him tonight. So I think he’s booked for the day.”

“I don’t know why you’re looking at me like that. So he’s on a date? So what?”

“Oh, I wouldn’t call it a date,” Cam said significantly. Divya gave him a blank, unimpressed look until Cam got the message that he was going to need to elaborate with words. “He’s with _Emily_ , she’s the only girl he answers the phone for.”

“Shit, really?” Divya was almost impressed, but like hell did they need another distraction right now. “Do you think she’s actually going to sleep with him?”

“I think that ship may have sailed already,” Cam said, more than a little distaste in his voice. His mouth went pinched and tight in a way that called to mind images of Protestant church ladies and school board trustees. It was an endlessly funny expression to see on the face of someone who looked like such a frat boy, boat shoes crossed at the ankles, feet resting on the coffee table.

“But she’s still with that guy, right? Ernest? I can never remember his name.”

“Everett,” Cam said, looking up sharply. “From the Porcellian, you don’t remember Everett?”

“I don’t know if _you_ remember, but I’m not _a member_ of the Porcellian,” Divya snapped, defensive.

“But … the punch process, you remember the punch process sophomore year, surely.”

“Cam, if I’d known it was an option to try for a second shot I might’ve made an effort to retain more, but after it all ended I was mostly just trying not to wallow in it.”

“Right,” Cam said, shaking his head a little as if to set himself straight. “I … I apologize. There was no reason for you to have kept up with him.”

Divya leaned forward, running his hands up and down his calves nervously. “Alright but speaking of the punch process,” he said, “didn’t you have something to show me?”

Cam nodded briskly, opening the drawstring bag. “You aren’t going to like this,” he warned, a little sheepish.

Divya was prepared to be spiteful at the assumption. To really show Cam the extent to which he wasn’t easily fazed. But then Cameron followed up by removing two hypodermic syringes from his bag and placing them on the coffee table.

Divya stared at the syringes for a long moment before looking back up at Cam. 

“No,” he said firmly.

“I told you,” Cam said, wincing a bit. “But just let me show you.”

Divya watched as if from a distance, as if watching something on a screen, while Cam wrapped a tourniquet around his own upper arm and wiped the area clean with an alcohol pad. He was methodical and calm about it, as if this was something he was used to. As if he wasn’t being observed.

Cam finally looked up to meet Divya’s eyes when he plunged the needle in. Blood filled the syringe, and he didn’t blink once.

“Now you,” he said gently, once the full syringe had been set safely down on a washcloth.

Cam’s hands were gentle as he tied the tourniquet around Divya’s arm. Divya had never been this close to him before, not even on the night Cam had shown up sick at Divya’s apartment. He could smell Cam’s cologne. Could smell river water. 

“These are cold,” Cam observed quietly before wiping down Divya’s inner elbow, “and this will sting,” he warned after, then plunged the needle in.

 _What the hell am I doing_ , Divya asked himself as nausea rose in the back of his throat. There was no explainable reason for why this should be happening. Every survival instinct in his body was commanding him to run, to not look back. 

Cam pulled the needle out. Divya shoved down the urge to escape, along with the urge to grab a fistful of Cameron’s hair and press his face down against the bruise he’d just made, make him run his mouth over it. (Jesus christ, what was wrong with him?)

“It does get worse from here,” Cameron said with a grim, apologetic smile. He reached into his bag again.

Divya wasn’t sure what he was expecting — a knife, maybe, or a lighter, something they’d use to inflict further damage on themselves. What he wasn’t expecting was two shot glasses.

“ _No_ ,” Divya repeated once he understood what he was seeing.

“Just follow my lead,” Cameron reassured, and Divya watched, captivated, as he emptied the syringe of Divya’s blood into a glass.

Nausea and piercing arousal overwhelmed him in equal measure. Cam was going to _drink_ it. Take something of Divya inside his mouth and pull it down his throat. 

Divya wouldn’t have been able to look away to save his own life.

Cam pulled a series of smaller pouches out of the bag. He added small amounts of powder from each to the glass, finishing with what looked like a miniscule white bone. Once he seemed satisfied, he lifted up the glass in that way Divya always made fun of, holding it with just his thumb and middle finger. 

“I’m sorry about this,” Cam said, and tossed it back. 

Divya watched Cameron’s throat bob as he swallowed his blood. _Now you have me_ , he thought, a little hysterical. _You have me inside you_. This was the point of no return, he knew. This was the point where any sane person would have run. 

But Divya couldn’t leave now. Not with the two of them left uneven like this. He refused to let Cam take something from him without taking back the equivalent. He wanted, _needed_ to swallow him down and make him his. He knew that the minute he left this room, they’d never be the same.

“Get it ready for me,” Divya said, as calmly as he could muster. Cam looked relieved, though not overly surprised, and Divya was grateful for that. 

“Do I have to swallow the bone?” Divya blurted out as Cam added the other elements from his bag to the glass.

Cameron flushed impressively red for someone who’d just had blood drawn. 

“It’s small,” he said. “You won’t feel it. But yes, you have to.”

Divya’s breath was coming in short, shallow bursts. Behind them he could hear the tap leaking in the bathroom, rapid drips keeping time with Divya’s racing heart.

“Or, sorry, you’re supposed to,” Cameron amended. “If we want this to work. But you don’t have to. You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do.”

“Just give me the glass,” Divya snapped, and watched Cam’s eyes widen as he took it and emptied it into his mouth.

Cam’s blood was warm and salty and unpleasant to taste, and Divya swallowed quickly before he could embarrass himself by gagging. It wasn’t anything like sex. He was a little embarrassed at how much he’d wanted it to be.

He still wanted to climb into Cam’s lap and kiss him while they both tasted like blood. 

“What next?” Divya asked, and his voice was low and hoarse.

“Now you just have to sleep on it,” Cam said, patting Divya’s leg impersonally, like a primary care physician at the end of a routine check-up. “The worst part is over.”

“Wait, that’s _it?_ ” Divya said, incredulous. “What the hell was that supposed to clear up? Cam, what was that supposed to make me understand?” 

“You’ll know,” Cam said firmly. “I know it doesn’t seem that way now, but you’ll understand everything soon.”

Unfortunately for Divya, Cam had always been good for his word.

Telling Divya to “sleep on” anything was kind of a fucking joke, since his sleep problems were bad enough without having an occult blood ritual to worry about on top of them, but no sooner had he settled into bed than he felt the exhaustion of the day overcome him. It was nice, the sensation of warmth settling over him, and oh _fuck_ Cam had drugged him, hadn’t he.

 _Drugged, really? Don’t you trust me, Div?_ He could imagine Cam saying, as clearly as though he were in the room with him, and he thought _Not a fucking chance_ furiously in the direction of the Quad. 

Divya dreamed in fits and starts, little flashes of imagery that pulled away before he could sit comfortably within them. He was swimming, laughing, salt on his skin and seagulls overhead. He didn’t recognize his voice. He was rowing, muscle memory pulling him through the water effortlessly even as Divya realized he didn’t know how to do this. His brothers were looking for him during hide and seek and Tyler should have found him by now. He knew he should be pleased that he hadn’t, that he was winning, but why wouldn’t Tyler know where to look for him? His brother, his twin, his mirror, where was he? 

How long was Cam supposed to wait to be found?

He was kneeling in the mud, and Tyler could have _told_ him they’d be on the ground in the damn woods before he’d worn one of his nicer pairs of pants.

Cam was very much aware it was the least of his worries tonight, but it was the easiest thing to focus on.

“Hey,” Tyler said, last-minute urgency in his voice the way he sometimes got right before a crew event. “Listen. There’s going to be a moment where you’re going to change your mind.”

Cameron raised his eyebrows at him. He didn’t necessarily disagree, he was already wary of what was about to happen before they’d even started, but it seemed rude of Tyler to assume. To say it out loud.

“Because it _happened to me_ , okay? Stop taking everything so personally,” Tyler huffed. How utterly fantastic that Tyler was going to spend their last few seconds of normalcy annoyed with him. “I just want you to know that when I’m holding your head underwater and you’re starting to panic, I already know, and I’m going to keep you down anyway. Because you’re going to be fine.”

“I know I’m going to be fine,” Cam said pleasantly, because when Tyler got intense and focused like this it meant Cam had to swing the other direction to keep them balanced. “I trust you,” he said easily. 

Tyler took in a long, steadying breath and then let it out. “You sure?”

“Why wouldn’t I be sure?”

Tyler’s eyes flicked to Cam and then away. There was something he hadn’t told him

If he asked now, Cam knew, that would throw them off. And they couldn’t afford to be off their game right now.

“Because it’s now or never,” Tyler said finally.

Cyrus walked behind each initiate and checked the restraints on their wrists. Cam’s mind sought to place it within the pattern of normalcy, came up with increasingly juvenile experiences to compare it to. Flight attendants making their rounds. Theme park attendants checking the safety bar on a roller coaster.

Cam breathed in slowly. Exhaled.

“You don’t have to do that,” Tyler said. “It’ll be over soon.”

He put a hand between Cam’s shoulder blades and pushed his head underwater. 

The first thirty seconds were agonizingly dull. His body didn’t understand the urgency yet, kept communicating discomfort from how he was positioned on the ground, distracting him with the fact that there was a rock in his shoe. He resisted constant impulses to sit up that didn’t even have to do with fear yet, simply the urge to shift and resettle, as though he had the luxury of adjusting his comfort right now. 

Tyler had one hand on the back of Cam’s head, the other bearing down against his shoulders. Cam could bench press slightly more than Tyler on a good day, but he knew better than anyone that that didn’t mean he was actually stronger. Knew it wouldn’t matter after 45 seconds with no oxygen.

Cam knew that Tyler knew how long he could hold his breath. 

Cam lost count of the seconds, felt himself starting to get dizzy. His lungs burned. He tried not to prove Tyler right by panicking, and tried not to reflexively inhale because he knew that would make it worse.

Or would it be better? Would that speed things along?

His body decided for him, in the end, because when it came down to it Cam had always been slightly weaker than he let others believe. Water filled his sinuses, his lungs, and his shoulders bucked up. Tyler shoved him back down.

Tyler had always believed Cam could keep up with him, and oh god Tyler didn’t know how truly weak he was, how much gaping deficiency he misdirected away from. Cam knew that people looked at him and saw the effortless perfection of his steel facade, knew how to cater once he found out what someone wanted, but it wasn’t the same as genuine strength. 

Tyler was going to overestimate what he could take. Tyler was going to kill him.

Cam thrashed, fought, and Tyler’s thumb rubbed up and down against his shoulder as he forced Cam’s head to stay underwater.

If Cam’s hubris was the way he acted stronger than he knew he truly was, Tyler’s hubris was in thinking he was untouchable, and Cam knew that if he died it would be at least halfway Tyler’s fault. 

“We don’t have to do this part,” Tyler had told him at the point when every other initiate was using blood magic to tie himself to the person who would be remaking him. “I may have … insinuated that we already had this kind of link because we’re twins, and that’s what got them to reconsider you as a junior year punch.” 

“ _Ty_ ,” Cam scolded, less because he was scandalized that Tyler had lied and more out of annoyance that he hadn’t guessed it in the first place. Of course he’d only been reconsidered because Tyler had greased the wheels.

“What? Are you complaining? I got you in. And it’s not as if you need the assurance that I’m not going to kill you.”

“Yes, obviously, I know you wouldn’t. But if this is the established practice, shouldn’t we at least try?”

“No. You don’t want me in your head,” Tyler insisted.

Tyler wasn’t necessarily wrong about that. They were already so constantly in one another’s space; there had to be a line _somewhere_. 

Still, Cam knew he had to at least ask. That was his role. “Will that make this process more dangerous?” 

“Do I have to spell this out for you?” Tyler snapped, and Cam was briefly possessed of the notion to grab Tyler by the shoulders and shake him. Was it really so hard to understand that Cam wanted to take all the necessary precautions over something that might kill him? “It’s one night, Cam. Yeah, it’s nice to know that the person holding your head underwater will die too if they actually let you drown, but once that’s over they’re _still there_ , Cam. Forever. Do you get that? Do you get that this is what ruined my fucking life?”

Cam felt like he’d been slapped. He didn’t, really, still didn’t quite understand what this had to do with how miserable Tyler had become throughout the last year. Maybe if they opened a channel within their minds to one another he _could_ understand it, and then he flinched away from that notion entirely. There was too much inside him that Tyler should never have access to. That he didn’t want _anyone_ to see, much less someone who loved him. 

But if they had established a blood link to one another back then, Tyler would understand now that Cameron needed Tyler to let him up. That their plan to rely on Tyler’s best instinct was a life-threatening risk, that they didn’t know each other as well as they pretended they did. 

Tyler pinched Cam’s shoulder, one of their old signals from when they were kids. Stop fighting, stop hitting me, mom’s looking and you’re going to get us both in trouble. 

Tyler had a lot of fucking nerve to tell Cam to stop fighting right now. To tell Cam to trust him. Cam remembered suddenly, as though someone had wiped a dirty window clean at the back of his mind, what had happened at the beach house during third-round cuts sophomore year. Cam was supposed to believe Tyler could keep him safe after abandoning him like that? After forcing Divya, still practically a stranger at that point, to pick up the slack to his own detriment?

Cam was never going to see Divya again, he realized. It was probably what Cam deserved.

When he came back to his body, Tyler had curled him on his side. Cam had the stupidly comforting thought that he was going to need to replace his shirt as well as his pants once they were home, and then Tyler hit him between the shoulders. Again. They’d been at this for a while, Cam realized as he regained sensation. Tyler hitting him and pushing against his chest to clear his airways. Cam coughed up liquid, such a deep shade of green it horrified him.

“Just get it all out, come on, I still have to drive you home after this,” Tyler murmured, and Cam glared at him through streaming eyes. “You did well, Cam, you did really well. Didn’t I tell you you’d be fine?”

“Screw you,” Cam rasped.

Tyler’s hand slowed where he’d been rubbing Cam’s back. “Alright,” he said, “I take it you finally remember the beach house?” 

Cam coughed weakly, falling onto his back when Tyler pulled his hand away. He wished he had the strength to tell him what a coward he was. 

“I ….. I should have helped you,” Tyler said, like that was an apology. “It was a mistake not to. I know that now.”

Tyler probably considered _this_ helping — getting Cam back into consideration this year, being the one to walk him through initiation. Like Cam had ever asked him for that. Like that made things right again.

Tyler leaned over Cam, got an arm around him to help him sit up. God, Cam was sick of being weak and needing help.

It wasn’t the most impressive punch he’d ever thrown, but no one ever expected Cameron to hit first. Tyler went down like he’d been shot when Cam hauled back and punched him in the throat.

“And that’s Cam, so everyone’s accounted for,” someone called out behind him. Cyrus, he realized. Everyone was still clustered in their pairs along the bank of the river, initiates coughing and recuperating, the restless energy from earlier dissipating.

Off in the distance, Chet whooped. The club could just be a club once again, now that no one had been made an accessory to murder. Another successful initiation for the books. 

“Don’t take me home,” Cameron said after a furiously silent walk to Tyler’s car. “Just drop me at Div’s.”

“It is _four_. In the goddamn _morning_ , Cam,” Tyler choked out, but he didn’t argue more than that. His throat probably hurt too much to make the effort, and didn’t that just serve him right.

Divya was only mad for about a half a second before flying into restless, hyperactive concern. Cam didn’t deserve it, but he recovered under the attention all the same, could feel the life beginning to come back to him.

Cam knew he owed Divya an explanation, or at the very least a convincing lie, but every time he opened his mouth, water poured out. His eyes streamed, though he wasn’t crying. He realized with a shock that this was part of what had been happening with Tyler. That Tyler had tried to explain things to him more than once, had been prevented from doing so.

It hollowed Cameron out that he couldn’t thank Divya for what had happened at the beach house.

Neither of them slept. Cameron didn’t think drowning victims were supposed to sleep right away, but if he was honest with himself, it wasn’t just that. 

He knew that if he slept he’d have the dream again, the same dream he’d been having ever since that first night of the punch process, the night when everyone kept offering their flasks to him. He couldn’t bring that into Divya’s home after he’d been welcomed in. 

And what if he started coughing again, the way he had been earlier? What if this time it actually came true?

He was always on the ground, in the dream. Always choking. One hand at his throat, tears streaming from his eyes. 

Cameron convulsed, gagging, until the head of a snake emerged from his mouth. He could feel the rest of it going all the way down his throat, and he couldn’t breathe.

Strings of saliva stained with blood dripped from his open mouth. Good _god_ , he was so disgusting. Anyone who helped him would think so. He did need help, but he couldn’t bear the thought of someone seeing him like this.

Of course this was how Divya found him. Cam wanted to melt into the ground out of shame.

“One of these days, I’m not gonna be around to fix everything for you,” Divya said, unfazed. 

He crouched down next to Cam, taking his face in both hands. The pit of Cam’s stomach burned with humiliation, with the fact that he couldn’t hide this from him.

“Cam, relax, jesus. Just let me fix it,” Divya said, and took the head of the snake into his own mouth.

He swallowed it down until their mouths were pressed together. Kept swallowing, pulling it out of Cam little by little. Anyone looking at them would think they were kissing. Would think they were doing something ordinary, loving. 

Wouldn’t have any idea that Cameron was pouring all the wrongness in his body into Divya, that Divya was taking it and locking it away inside of himself. Cam brought one of his hands up to Divya’s neck, rested his thumb beneath the basin of his chin. He could feel it leaving him, being pulled into Divya as Divya’s throat worked around it. He hated himself for doing this to him. 

He was selfishly, achingly hard.

Divya brought one of his hands to Cameron’s throat in return, and squeezed.

Divya woke up gagging. He could still feel the snake in his (Cam’s?) throat.

He knocked everything off his bedside table scrambling for his phone, called the third number he had saved in his speed dial.

“Get here,” he told Cam, not waiting for him to answer. “Right fucking now.”

**Author's Note:**

> As always, thank you to my girlfriend Mothallah for encouraging and nurturing this fic (and for bringing me grilled cheese, that was life-saving), and thank you to phonecallfromgod for all of the inspiration and writing sprints and comments and EVERYTHING EVERYTHING!!!! 
> 
> If you like the vibe of this fic, I sincerely recommend checking out phonecallfromgod's "& Other Prohibited Activities" and "Love Bytes", because they were such big sources of inspiration to me as I worked on this.
> 
> Chapter 2 will be up hopefully tomorrow or the night after <3


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